The subject matter described herein generally relates to systems and methods for conducting transactions (for example, monetary transactions, banking and the like) on the telecommunications web (“spoken web”), particularly in under-served areas without access to Internet connections and/or sophisticated banking tools, such as ATM machines, Internet account management systems, et cetera.
Conventional schemes to take banking to under-served (often remote or rural) areas are insufficient because physical bank branches cannot go to these areas in many cases. Moreover, ready Internet access is either not available in these areas or the potential customers cannot make use of such for accessing online banking tools because the customers do not have high end devices (such as laptop PCs or smartphones). Reports by government agencies in many areas, such as in rural areas of India, indicate low penetration of banking and a lack of financial inclusion for such areas.
Current efforts to fix this either involve setting up a wirelessly connected ATM-like infrastructure (which is expensive and hard to maintain), or a banking correspondent model using people who move money from a branch to remote areas in person. These solutions, however, suffer from a high overhead because of the high cost and the difficulty in travel (and the dangers involved), respectively. Thus, the known approaches essentially demand a person in under-served areas carry cash and/or some device (ATM) to perform bank or credit related transactions. This is often cited as a reason for high interest rates in micro-credit schemes and for the lack of the spread of banking to more remote areas.